The IRC conversation reads like a shill playbook

Story: TOYA Boys Stop Linux FlowTotal Replies: 4
Author Content
phsolide

Mar 18, 2009
7:30 PM EDT
You can just spot the talking points used by "nickj2" and "JustinXJS2":

"try running it as a live-cd first" "did someone tell you there aren't viruses for linux?" "if linux were a halfway decent product, everyone would be using it" "linux is still a sepcial-interest system. in a windows world, it's still an outsider " "there's too many variations of it. rather than developing a single solid linux, everyone is splitting off making their own little variants "

It's pretty well accepted that MSFT and Wagg-Ed do use a lot of shills in the world, as this wired.com blog posting shows: http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2009/03/dhs-appoints-mi.htm... Check out the response from "Keith". The author of the blog post, Kim Zetter, calls him/her/them out as an MSFT employee, but it's exceptional for a blog-owner to do that. "PJ" from groklaw.net used to hint rather broadly that sco.com people read GrokLaw, but again, that's really, really rare.

I'd like to see somebody high up at the parent company of "Slashdot" get riled up and cause CmdrTaco to do a survey of comments by IP-address owner, then post how many shills they get daily, etc etc. It'll never happen, because big corporations are all hand-in-glove with each other, if you get my drift.

techiem2

Mar 18, 2009
8:19 PM EDT
I came up with a theory while reading that post. They of course used the old "it's free so it can't be good" line. Which made me think that since that seems to be a common argument from people who have never tried Linux, that their thinking must come from: A. Firm belief in the old "if it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is" adage. B. They're leery of anything free after being burned by all those "free" things they've clicked on in IE that gave them other "free" stuff they didn't want (i.e. spyware and viruses).
caitlyn

Mar 18, 2009
8:45 PM EDT
techiem2: You forgot C:

C. They know it's B.S., a strawman argument, but they also believe it's effective with some people so they include it. If their goal is to make Linux look bad and they don't have any integrity then posting something they really don't believe fits right in.
jezuch

Mar 19, 2009
3:11 AM EDT
My impression was that they were too lazy and/or dumb to learn anything new and all this Linux bashing was just rationalization of their own failings.
tuxtom

Mar 19, 2009
4:16 AM EDT
@jezuch - That may be a valid point but that describes 95% of users out there...leaving only 5% who are interested or worthy of using Linux. Hardly critical mass for World Domination. Despite the hogwash he still makes some very valid points in regards to the average user. Of course, it doesn't really matter to me because it is to my advantage for Linux to remain exclusive.

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